Gato Loco!

An old fashioned loft party upstairs last night....the big band version of Gato Loco with deliriously, wonderful, sculptured music...musicians leaping on furniture and flinging music pages into the air as the beats come in, perfectly timed :

Saxophone:
French horn (I think):




Slide trombone:

Guitar:

Trumpet:


Trumpet:


Trumpet hands:

Trombone:

Tuba & trombone:


Sax:


Tuba:

Tuba, trumpet, & trombone:

Bass guitar & trumpet:

Conga hands:

Trumpet hands:

Other trumpet hands:

Sax:

Trombone plays, trumpet waits:
Trombone & trumpet with mute:
Trombone hands:




Trombone solo:


Guitar solo:



Trombone:

Sax:

Drummer's hands:



Bass guitar:

Tuba:

Done!

Sphinxland, still working

My friend, Robert Morales, came over the over day and looked at the painting. His comment was: "She's working." When I queried him he explained that the Sphinx looked very intent on whatever business she needed to take care of. A take that is quite Moralesistic. But I relish these articulations from the brains of others. Rarely do people tell me what my paintings do in their minds. What thoughts, feelings or musings. I don't know if it is a problem with words or a problem with comfort while the painter is standing next to you.
So here she is at work even as I am still at work on her:

Sphinxland in progress

The brush slides over the blackboard's surface like molten glass...thus the painting begins and we go off into the world of another mind with wings, fur, paws and a female brain with questions...

Last Above the Belt Show of 2009

Last night was the last Above the Belt show for 2009. It was spare in setting but extravagant in ability. As a former aerialist I prefer to focus on the pure physical art and this show was all that:
all photos by Jan Meissner


Britt Nhi Sarah



Rebecca Stronger & Rachel Ward



Kris Olness




Joshua Dean & Ben Franklin





Una Mimnagh

sketch

So the weather veers off kilter from summer, the summer of rains and unscorched lawns, and I reach for the nearest surface to paint on. I find another piece of black boarded aluminum, and lifting a piece of chalk from its pink, rhinestoned box I draw a scribbly blueprint.
There is always hope in the sketch that starts a new painting, like the opening credits and the music that seeps through the letters and levers open the brain's logic door. Out drifts sense and lets in sensibility.
Maybe I need coffee...

Lights in the Sky

I'm not big on memorials--I find that the memories come in their own idiosyncratic, organic way, and I'm OK with just that. But the 9/11 lights are beautiful, and the other night I was out on the fire escape, having completely forgotten the dates, and I looked up and saw the light hitting the clouds. At first I thought it was some fantastical moon event, but on following the beams down I realized what it was. Its one of the best public art pieces I've seen, standing simultaneously outside its own descriptive purpose, and deeply within it.

Phosphor

Chairs & blanks

After returning from upstate where an incredibly green and lush garden hosted fat rabbits, energetic humming birds, and gigantic squirrels throwing down hickory nuts day after day....I look back through an urban tunnel to a place where there was a blank in the studio that I filled (you'll have to wait as it isn't finished) and a deck with jewel coated chairs.
All in a bemused fuddle of memory now that I am a bit of drift in the tide of New York...but I glean the spark of color that throws down the short time line and meets my brain head on, here in the other studio.

Joke from Russia and paintings of Mike

From Russia:

Due to the recession and to conserve resources, there will no longer be a light at the end of the tunnel.


Meanwhile I paint my friend Mike:






while Feather sits out the heat onslaught:


photo: Jan Meissner


...and the golden rod gets ready to bloom:

Hot Light

The sun pounds through the glass, pierces the shadows and obliterates any cool thoughts in ones blood...




...in the air of many fans I paint anyways, piling the brush strokes towards the emotional pitch I can taste in my flesh but not explain with my tongue.





Meanwhile Feather curls and melts into the sheets on the massage table...

flower, music & creek

Blooming on the window sill: the extravagant passion flower like a cross between a helicopter and an alien fairy.

...and then the music choices of the day for painting accoutrement:
(you can actually read them if you click on the image)




..and the image in progress:

from above

Yesterday evening while sitting on my fire escape: below me a man doing his bows to Mecca on a folded flat Sabrett hot dog box. He has taken off his shoes and placed them carefully next to the cardboard. He does a few on-the-knees-arms-stretched-out-to-to God and in between stands quietly, head lowered. A woman is on the sidewalk asking someone where to get the B or D train. The praying man leaves his cardboard post and explains to her how to get them by taking the A train and then changing at West 4th. He returns to his spot and shrugs his feet into his shoes, gathers up the flattened box, and returns inside to where the hotdog carts are kept.

Pynchon!

He's back, scribbling across the beach & waves of 1969's California.....drifting through the brains of various, wonderful looser-heroes. Its mythic, hilarious and sure to break your heart before the end. I'm only on page 119, having just arrived there with my morning coffee.

Mist and Sun

In the garden the shapes melt and fur in the mist. Their shadows soften and their leaves kiss.
It is not so with the ghosts that flit through the body like needled threads. One cannot avoid them any more than the air can stand aside from the passage of birds.



What color is mist? Is it blue or violet or simply just a dissemblance of form?





..and then the sun turns everything to color leaning against black. One underestimates the charisma of black until green gets drunk in summer's seductive fold.